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The First Line I Drew · After the Signal

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is After The Signal.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go a little farther down the road.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are things our parents remember about us that we don't remember ourselves.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: My father once told me a story about something I did when I was 10 or 11 years old.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was playing Little League football.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was a defensive end, and I was pretty good.
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  SPEAKER_00: The problem was that I played the same position as the coach's son,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the coach's son wasn't as good.
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  SPEAKER_00: At least that was my assessment at 10 years old.
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  SPEAKER_00: Apparently,
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  SPEAKER_00: after one practice a few weeks into the season,
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  SPEAKER_00: I got into the car with my father and told him that if the coach didn't put me in
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  SPEAKER_00: the next game, I was going to change teams.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember saying that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I learned much later that my father remembered me saying it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what strikes me now is that he didn't try to talk me out of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: He didn't tell me to be patient.
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  SPEAKER_00: He didn't tell me the coach was in charge and I needed to accept whatever decision he made.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, as far as I know, he didn't go confront the coach himself.
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  SPEAKER_00: He let me make my statement.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he let me live with it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next game came.
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  SPEAKER_00: The coach didn't put me in.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I changed teams.
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  SPEAKER_00: That part I do remember.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I definitely remember what happened a few weeks later.
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  SPEAKER_00: My new team played my old team.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember the final score.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember many of the plays.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I remember spending a considerable portion of that afternoon in their backfield.
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  SPEAKER_00: I probably sacked the quarterback half a dozen times.
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  SPEAKER_00: For a 10-year-old boy who believed he had been treated unfairly,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was about as satisfying an afternoon as you can imagine.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: At that age, I'm sure I thought that was the lesson.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Prove them wrong.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: More than 50 years later, I don't think that was the lesson at all.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing happened before the game.
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  SPEAKER_00: I had told someone how I expected to be treated, and then I had to decide whether I meant it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: My father understood that before I did.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why he remembered the story all those years.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite quotations is a line often attributed to Maya Angelou.
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  SPEAKER_00: People will forget what you said.
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  SPEAKER_00: People will forget what you did.
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  SPEAKER_00: But people will never forget how you made them feel.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've always loved that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as I've gotten older, I've started hearing something else inside it.
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  SPEAKER_00: People remember how we make them feel.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we also remember how people make us feel.
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  SPEAKER_00: We remember the teacher who made us believe we were capable of more than we thought.
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  SPEAKER_00: The boss who treated us with respect before we had a title.
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  SPEAKER_00: The coach who believed in us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The friend who stayed when staying was inconvenient.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we remember the people who made us feel small.
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  SPEAKER_00: We may forget their exact words.
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  SPEAKER_00: We may forget the date.
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  SPEAKER_00: We may even forget the circumstances, but somehow the feeling survives.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that feeling teaches us what we will or will not allow the next time.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a version of this idea in the executor's silence.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas Ward teaches his son Elias something that became increasingly important to me
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: as I wrote the book.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that means every slight deserves confrontation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quite the opposite.
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  SPEAKER_00: Age has taught me that a lot of things aren't worth fighting about.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to win every argument.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to correct every person who misunderstands you.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to answer every criticism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes strength is simply knowing who you are well enough
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  SPEAKER_00: that somebody else's opinion doesn't require a response.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there are other moments when silence teaches the wrong lesson.
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  SPEAKER_00: If someone repeatedly treats you with disrespect and you continue accepting it,
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  SPEAKER_00: eventually the behavior stops feeling exceptional.
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes the relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what interests me now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not confrontation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not winning.
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  SPEAKER_00: The moment when a pattern is established.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because patterns have a way of becoming expectations.
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  SPEAKER_00: I wonder sometimes how much of the man I became was already visible in that 10-year-old boy.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
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  SPEAKER_00: Memory is dangerous that way.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to look backward and create a straight line through a life
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  SPEAKER_00: that wasn't straight while you were living it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I was standing on principle.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I was just a stubborn kid who wanted to play football.
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  SPEAKER_00: Probably some of both.
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  SPEAKER_00: But my father remembered it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And years later, he told me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which means the story became part of my understanding of myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: even though the original memory largely disappeared.
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  SPEAKER_00: That fascinates me.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our parents sometimes carry pieces of our childhood that we lose.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then, if we're fortunate, they give some of them back.
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  SPEAKER_00: My father gave me this one.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I've carried it ever since.
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  SPEAKER_00: What I didn't understand at 10 was that eventually the roles change.
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  SPEAKER_00: You stop being the child watching adults exercise authority.
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  SPEAKER_00: You become the adult.
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  SPEAKER_00: You become the father,
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  SPEAKER_00: the employer,
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  SPEAKER_00: the coach, the person whose words can change the temperature of a room.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the question changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer simply, how will I allow people to treat me?
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes, how will I treat people when I'm the one with the power?
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that question is harder because standing up to authority is one kind of character.
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  SPEAKER_00: Exercising authority without diminishing the people impacted by it is another.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've had opportunities in my life to get that right and opportunities to get it wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can remember both.
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  SPEAKER_00: And some of the experiences I remember most clearly involved my sons,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially my oldest son, Chad.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: When he was seven years old, he signed up to play YMCA football.
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  SPEAKER_00: There was a little box on the application asking whether a parent would be willing
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  SPEAKER_00: to coach if coaches were needed.
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  SPEAKER_00: I checked the box.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of course they needed coaches.
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  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly, I was being called coach by a bunch of seven-year-olds.
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  SPEAKER_00: That was new.
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  SPEAKER_00: And almost immediately, I discovered something that probably should have been obvious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Seven-year-old boys could not have cared less about my sophisticated thoughts on football.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were first graders.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I stopped trying to teach them football the way adults understand football.
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  SPEAKER_00: I started using things they were already learning in school
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  SPEAKER_00: and connecting those ideas to the game.
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  SPEAKER_00: And something happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: They got it.
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  SPEAKER_00: More importantly, they enjoyed it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed it too.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We won the championship that year.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then, for reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand, I never coached football again.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I think I should have.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because I learned something from those boys that has stayed with me.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership isn't demonstrating how much you know.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's figuring out what the people you're responsible for need from you
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  SPEAKER_00: so they can become the best version of themselves.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: That lesson would come back years later,
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  SPEAKER_00: with Chad, with another football team, and with another coach.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But that story is for next time.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: October is going to be a little different on After the Signal.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you some stories I haven't told here before.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I think my life is particularly extraordinary.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: But because I'm beginning to realize how much of what I write came
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: from experiences I had long before I ever thought about writing novels.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: My father, my sons, marriage, leadership, loss.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The things we inherit from people.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The things we pass forward without realizing it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The things we eventually decide should stop with us.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions are all over the Executor series.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think I had invented most of them.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm beginning to understand that I didn't.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I lived them first.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's why,
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  SPEAKER_00: as I get closer to releasing The Executor's Discovery on November 2nd,
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  SPEAKER_00: I find myself thinking less about the mysteries in the books and more about
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  SPEAKER_00: the people underneath them.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because inheritance isn't only property.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't money.
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  SPEAKER_00: It isn't even memory.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes inheritance is a sentence your father remembers you saying when you were 10 years old.
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  SPEAKER_00: You forget it.
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  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Years later, he gives it back to you.
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  SPEAKER_00: And 50 years after a little boy drew a line on a football field,
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  SPEAKER_00: the man he became finally begins to understand why it mattered.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is After the Signal.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, strengthen the things that remain.